Q Chocolate

General Chocolate Interests

Category : Test

Degustation after a month – Chocolate beer

July 25th 2010 Posted at Alcohol, Experiments, General, Projects, Test
0 Comments

Saturday, July 24th 2010

Tonight the pressure was getting too high.  I had to open one of these bottles that have been looking at me for almost a month.  The fermenting is over.  the second fermentation on the bottle should be over now.  Time to open one and check how it tastes.

I have a friend, Jim, from the USA and the first sip was left to him.

Oh yeah, and it was worth it.  Combined with Belcolade Papua New Guinea64 chocolate, the beer is dark in color with a smooth head. The flavor of oats, malts and a chocolate are balanced perfectly with the right amount of hops for a bittersweet finish.

You will hear more the upcoming days about the beer evolution.

Cheers

Alain

Healthy pralines with tea

April 12th 2010 Posted at Tea, Test
0 Comments

Monday, april 12th 2010

Another healthy day today.  I experimented with tea and chocolate.

I made a few pralines with ganache based on tea.  Not so easy to find the right amount of tea to put in.

I use natural tea from the Sao Paulo tea shop in Gent.  They have a lot of different sort of tea’s from all over the world.  The experiment I did today was based on Cherry taste tea and Energy welness tea.  You can find the ingredients of the tea below.

The first one is the Energy welness tea praline.  The tea consists of dried ingredients with apple, citronella grass, carrot, roseflower leafs and grapefruit.

Cooking the cream and milk with the tea

White Callebaut chocolate

Tempering the white chocolate

The result is a smooth and a bit grapefruit taste

The second praline is  made with cherry tea wich consists of dried ingredients of cherries, apple, hibiscus, rose-hip and elderberries.  When I mixed it with white chocolate I found out that the colour of the ganache turned out grey – purple.

Grey ganache, not really pleasant to see but an amazing perfume and taste.

Cherry tea praline (I can make the colour more purple with colouring agent but I prefer not to use chemicals for the experiment)

More about chocolate and tea very soon.  Keep visiting the site.

Grtz Alain

Practical test – The musselpot

April 23rd 2009 Posted at General, Test
0 Comments

Wednesday, april 22nd 2009

I hope everyone had a good Easter vacation ?  After 2 weeks vacation I am back with some new art pieces.

Today was the practical test.  The goal was to make a chocolate piece of choice.  The chocolate piece should also be used for the paper I have to make about chocolate.  I made some general pictures and I also present the objects my collegues produced.

The chocolate building

Ingredients and moulded objects

The musselpot, glued togheter with chocolate and sprayed with cocoabutter still wet and then dried

Here are some other objects from my collegues

From now on my practical lessons are over.  The only thing that rests is doing the theoretical test and finishing my written essay.  Then in june I have to defend my essay in front of a jury.  I hope I make it.

Meanwhile I will keep on posting chocolate creations that I make.

Cheers

Alain

The final test and the creations

January 22nd 2009 Posted at Butter mass, General, Test
0 Comments

Wednesday, january 21st 2009

As mentioned last week today was the end test of the praline module.  There were a few things I had to do.

I had to create 10 wild cherry’s in chocolate, 250gr of truffles, 24 cream pralines and 24 pralines with a pattern on.  Meanwhile all of the pralines need to be filled with something tasty ofcourse.

A thank you goes to Xavier, my colleague student, he prepared some stuff that was very helpfull !!

This is the result of my exam :

Wild Cherries on alcohol, dipped in glucose and then covered with chocolate

Buttermass made with Passoa drink

Pralinee praline with a transfer applied on top

Real Belgian handmade truffles with white buttermass

Now I am waiting for the results of course.  I hope to receive the result as soon as possible.

The upcoming courses are also interesting.  I have 9 lessons in chocolate art.  This means making chocolate pieces for special occasions.  Different techniques will be studied.  There are also another 10 lessons about management, hygiene and organisation which will be a bit boring I guess.  The last lesson, Monday Mai 18th is my final exam.  I will keep you posted.

Cheers Alain

Copyright 2010 Q Chocolate | Powered by WordPress | Designed by Diamonds Designers